America's First Daughter: A Novel(142)
“There is only one secret to anything,” Dolley asserted. “And that’s the power we all have in forming our own destinies.”
Washington, 27 February 1809
From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph
In retiring to the condition of a private citizen, I have a single uneasiness. I’m afraid that the administration of the house will give you trouble. Perhaps, with a set of good and capable servants, as ours certainly are, the trouble will become less after their understanding the regulations which are to govern them. Ignorant too, as I am, in the management of a farm, I shall be obliged to ask the aid of Mr. Randolph’s skill and attention.
On a marvelous spring day, my father commemorated forty years of service to his country by surrendering the reins of government—and a brewing war—to the new president. Celebratory cannons fired, ladies flirted with Papa, and a special farewell march was played for him at James Madison’s inaugural ball. The latter was a touch only Dolley would’ve thought to include, and I loved her for it.
Then Papa loaded up wagons with all the belongings he’d acquired as president. Spoons and pudding dishes, coverlets and clocks and shoes. Boxes, books, and furniture strained at the six-mule team pulling the load.
In anticipation of his homecoming, my heart beat with inexpressible anxiety and impatience. I wanted nothing so much as to clasp Papa in the bosom of his family, for the evening of his life to pass in serene and unclouded tranquility in the home he’d spent twenty years rebuilding.
A home in which my entire family would now reside.
The proposal was put to Tom in ways to spare his feelings: What would people say if we left my sixty-five-year-old father to live alone with Sally as his housekeeper? Besides, Papa couldn’t manage without us. He hadn’t Tom’s genius for preventing soil erosion. My husband, whatever else his faults, was a hardwork ing, inventive planter whose failures were due to bad luck and the rotting legacy his father left him.
My husband surprised me by listening to this entreaty in silence, finally nodding his head in assent. And I realize now that it was because he already knew he couldn’t support our still growing family at Edgehill; the arrangement spared him more embarrassment than it gave him, lifting his family from certain poverty with the fig leaf of caring for my aging father. Even Ann and her new husband, Charles, would move in with us so that she could help work in Papa’s gardens to make it just so, for they shared a special bond over flowers and herbs. We’d have the whole family together!
At last, after trials of blizzards and crowds demanding speeches of him in taverns and inns on the way, Papa was ours now, and I went running down the road to meet him, in rapture, in joy. We embraced one another, all the children gathered round, hopeful for the family idyll and ignoring the rumble of the coming war in the distance.
Part Three
Mistress of Monticello
Chapter Thirty-two
Monticello, 21 January 1812
From Thomas Jefferson to John Adams
A letter from you carries me back to the times when we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man: his right of self-government. Sometimes I look back in remembrance of our old friends who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomac, and, on this side, myself alone.
IT IS DIFFICULT NOT TO SMILE with a bittersweet pang in reading the letters between my father and John Adams, exchanged in the twilight of their lives. My husband couldn’t fathom how Papa could set aside political acrimony to resume the old friendship, but those were happy years at Monticello, and harmony was our pursuit and our reward.
My bed at Monticello was an alcove, and I slept snug and toasty between my husband’s body and the wall. In the morning, the warm light of dawn spilled from the windows near the floor. They were double-paned; they never leaked. And everything in our sky-blue bedroom was neat and clean, which had a decidedly happy effect on my mood.
“Good morning,” Tom said, his breath warm on the back of my neck, his hand gently cupping my belly under blankets that smelled of lavender.
I knew what he wanted, and his touch ignited something inside me, too, but I feared another child. “Tom, it’s so early.”
“The rooster’s already crowed,” he protested, nuzzling my shoulder. “Besides, I’m riding for Edgehill straightaway this morning. I’ve a long day ahead of me.”
“Then you can’t afford to lose daylight,” I chirped. “Let me up and I’ll see the servants get you a quick breakfast.”
Reluctantly, Tom swung his long legs over to let me rise from the bed. “I’ll take the boy. Hopefully we’ll get the fields prepared for another good crop.”
By “the boy,” he meant Jeff, who had, after a single year’s instruction, returned home from the University of Pennsylvania in near disgrace. Before he could be entrusted to help manage our plantations, Jeff would have to prove himself to his father—a thing he was doing by outworking Tom in the fields and at every other plantation chore.
Having quit Congress, my husband’s luck had turned. We’d had two good harvests, and Tom’s were the only fields in the county that survived the storms because of his new method of plowing. Between that and the fact Papa was housing, clothing, and feeding our children, we were finally making payments on our debts.